Things to do in Malmö

Neighborhood · Central-south

Möllan: the market square and the streets around it, the most mixed and most argued-about part of Malmö, and the best eating in the city.

Local tip: The square's fruit and vegetable stalls are genuinely cheap and genuinely good, and they drop prices further in the last hour before they pack up. Eat falafel from one of the Möllevångsgatan places rather than anywhere with a menu in English.

Nature · Western shoreline

A two-kilometre artificial beach along the strait, with an 1898 open-air cold bathhouse on a pier at the end of it.

Local tip: The Kallbadhus is nude-bathing and sex-segregated, with wood-fired saunas over the water — and it is open in January, which is the point. Swedes will tell you the sea here is warm; it is not, and that is also the point.

Landmark · North-west waterfront

The Kockums shipyard site rebuilt from 2001 as a carbon-neutral district, with Calatrava's 190-metre twisting tower at its centre.

Local tip: Skip the tower, which you cannot go up, and walk the Scaniabadet boardwalk at the western tip instead. It is where the city swims on a summer evening and where the Danish coast is closest — you can see Copenhagen's skyline on a clear day.

Food · Central, by the station

A 1890s freight terminal turned market hall in a district of converted slaughterhouse buildings, five minutes from Malmö C.

Local tip: It is a short walk from the Øresunddirekt office, which makes it the obvious place to end the morning where you sort out your cross-border paperwork. Get skagenröra or the smoked fish rather than the coffee-shop end of the hall.

Culture · Central-south

Sweden's oldest public park, founded 1891 as a workers' park, with a Moorish pavilion, a free-entry funfair feel and open-air stages.

Local tip: Far Far Away — the vegetarian food hall in the old dance pavilion — and the Far i Hatten beer garden are what locals actually use it for. In summer the free concerts and the Sunday flea market are both real events, not tourist-facing ones.

Culture · 11 minutes north by train

A 1666 university town with a Romanesque cathedral, an astronomical clock, and the largest research investment in Swedish history on its outskirts.

Local tip: The train from Malmö C takes about eleven minutes and runs constantly, so people live in one city and work in the other without thinking about it. Go for the cathedral crypt and the Kulturen open-air museum — and note that the Lund municipal tax rate is 32.42%, the same as Malmö's, so moving between them costs nothing.